Exiled Chinese journalist Su Yutong tells her story
May 3 marks World Press Freedom Day. When Chinese journalist Su Yutong fled her home country in 2010, she thought she would find safety. However, even while living in exile in Germany, she discovered she is not free from China’s reach. From Berlin, Voice of America’s Liam Scott has Su’s story.
Su Yutong has become a skilled chef. Cooking dishes she loved in Beijing connects the journalist with her home country and helps fill the long periods spent home alone. The reason for her self-imposed isolation: years of attacks and threats from China.
Su Yutong
Journalist
“I keep telling the truth, so they [China] want me to shut up, including by threatening me.”
Sharing a banned book on Tiananmen Square back in 2010 began Su’s troubles. Police raided her home in Beijing and held her under house arrest. But with the help of friends, she escaped to Europe. For a while, Germany’s capital provided a sense of safety. Su wrote human rights stories for Deutsche Welle and then Radio Free Asia. But the sense of safety soon disappeared. In 2022, strange men started turning up at her building, brought there by an underground sex website that listed her address.
Su Yutong
Journalist
“I felt very disgusted and very humiliated, and I had some mental health problems at the time. I was afraid to walk down the street.”
The worst was yet to come. In 2023, assailants used Su and two Chinese activists’ identities to book rooms at luxury hotels in Berlin and other cities. Then, they called in fake bomb threats. Experts say that Su’s case is extreme even for Beijing, which ranks among the worst perpetrators of transnational repression.
Mareike Ohlberg
German Marshall Fund
“The basic tactics of transnational repression are usually geared toward showing people that they can’t get away from the Chinese government.”
The driving goal, says Ohlberg, is to stop any criticism of China overseas. Neither China’s embassy in Berlin nor its foreign ministry responded to VOA’s requests for comment. Being targeted is a lonely experience. Over a two-year period, Su barely left her apartment. She says even something as simple as a walk in the park can feel tinged with danger. But now, Su says she feels less afraid.
Su Yutong
Journalist
They didn’t expect me to slowly come out of that shadow. I think they should be afraid, not me. They can’t shut me up.
Her life is fuller again, but Su’s apartment is still sparse. After the 2023 incidents, police recommended she move. When she did, she left nearly everything behind. Except the tools needed to keep reporting. In one way, says Su, there’s a sense of comfort in knowing that Beijing is scared too. If they weren’t, Su believes, they wouldn’t try so hard to silence her.
Liam Scott, VOA News, Berlin.
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2024-05-03
